


Know These Things

by KNSkns



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24206722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KNSkns/pseuds/KNSkns
Summary: Sometimes Seru will be in the solace of his quarters, pruning the glorious flora, and an errant light will glint off the edge of Siranna's knife. Sometimes Bryce has to remind himself –Not everyone thinks in lines of poetry –and it saddens him every time. Sometimes Tilly has to go to the holodeck because she needs a cat. Sometimes Rhys has to remind himself that the war's over, and they won.  Sometimes Detmer looses her words.This is what matters. This is what's important.You have to know these things. . .~ Adrienne Rich “North American Time”
Kudos: 14





	1. Seru

**Author's Note:**

> Potential spoilers for – well, everything (S1-2.) All quotes from Rich's “North American Time.”

Disclaimer: Again and still not mine.

You have to know these things. . .  
~ Adrienne Rich “North American Time”

Saru

[. . . where the context is never given  
though we try to explain, over and over. . . ]

Sometimes Seru will be in the solace of his quarters, pruning the glorious flora – a leaf here, a dying flower there – and an errant light will glint off the edge of Siranna's knife. He will pause in that reflection, pulled without thought into yesterday's place.

This has happened more than once.

Here it is the season of plenty, with gracious flowers stretching nearly knee-high from hooves to horizon. He is yet a calfling, as is the sister beside him, although he is older and less given to frolicking than she is (or so he tells others.) In truth, in this field of scarlet petals bobbing easily beneath a gentle sun, he is jumping and spinning as much as his sister. There are no eyes but theirs, no one but them to hear their unfettered clicks and cries of joy.

But Father sent them with a purpose, and after a too-brief time of sprawling atop flora soft as Mother's skin, they retrieve their pails and obediently begin to harvest the ready flowers. Siranna chatters endlessly as they work; he overlooks her words in favor of listening to wind-whispers. It is his responsibility to keep them both safe while on their own.

This is no easy task.

His attention is absolute, split between these two tasks – harvest and safety – so much that he hears the steps behind him an instant too late. A river of soft is dumped over his head, leaving him brushing petals out of his eyes. Siranna is speechless with amusement, her squeals of delight combining with efforts to avoid his inevitable grasp until she stumbles over her own hooves and tumbles backwards, knocking over his pail as she falls. Her harvest-knife flies from open fingers.

He is annoyed in the extreme. “Siranna!” Now neither of them have anything to show for their day. The sunlight glints off the edge of her abandoned blade; he plucks it from the dust. “This is mine now.”

Siranna makes a face. “A small price to pay to see your expression, brother,” she taunts, undaunted. “I got you!”

She did indeed.

Life and distance and time later, in a home surrounded by flora from his first home, he will fondly acknowledge that she still has him, will have him forever.

Does she know her knife is the only object he took when he fled their childhood? And would she approve of his choice, or merely think him a thief?


	2. Bryce

[Everything we write  
will be used against us  
or against those we love.]

Sometimes Bryce has to remind himself –   
_Not everyone thinks in lines of poetry –_  
and it saddens him every time.  
Events aren't always worthy of eternity –   
this he knows like his own shadow –   
but not everything can fit into the prose of a report, either.

Upon this all of his life agrees –   
even his earliest childhood memories –   
he is best suited to narratives of art  
and often a non-linear nature.

This is an element he has never attempted to conceal.

(Until he came to _Discovery,_ and Lorca.  
Only a madman hates poetry in his heart.)

“There's something wrong with you, boy,”  
his Aunt had claimed when learning of his Starfleet enlistment.  
“The military ain't no place for an artist like you.”  
Amid his protests that Starfleet wasn't military –   
“Then why they got all them guns on stuff, huh?” –   
an Uncle had intervened on his behalf :  
“Leave him 'lone, he'll work it out.”

This is his art:  
to bend the science of technology  
to the necessity of the message  
and bring forth the elements  
and present the pieces  
so that meaning can be found in confusing times.

(And when he came to _Discovery,_ he became a Poet Laureate.  
Was he blind not to see how meanings could be used against all he treasures –   
or was he merely innocent?)

He despises how the words _darkness_ and _evil_  
are used interchangeably.  
Is the void of space not dark?  
And shadows?  
Does anyone craving rest seek blinding brilliance?

_Soldier_ is his title now –   
he fights ignorance with communication – 

(Despite all that has happened  
he has not lost himself – )


	3. Tilly

[The almost-full moon rises  
timeless speaking of change. . .]

Sometimes Tilly has to go to the holodeck because she needs a cat. Or a dog. Bird. Ferret. Fish. All of the above?

Whatever.

What she needs is someone who isn't Human, Andorian, Tellaride, Vulcan, Naussican, or one of the other fifteen billion races on _Discovery._ Not that there's anything wrong with them, but there's something wrong with her. Wait, that's her mother's voice. No, what she means is: she misses nature. Not that she was ever really the outdoorsy type, but wow, space can really be empty sometimes.

The botanists have a big-ass area, of course. She goes there now and then, usually pretending she's got a genuine reason to be there, not just because she wants to see trees and flowers. Although isn't that a good enough reason? But those plant people can be TERRITORIAL. Seriously, why didn't anyone think of telling them the Klingons hated plants? The war would've been over in record time. Don't cross them plant people, hell no.

Apparently it isn't unusual for crewmen to have pets, especially on long-term deployments, but there are, like, no animals on _Discovery._ She'd heard that was because of Lorca, but if that was true, then why had Lorca had a tribble? (And where had that tribble gone when Lorca left? She bets Michael knows, but she's not gonna ask.)

So to the holodeck she goes.

On one of his less-grumpy/reduced irritable days, Stamets had helped her code this program of an adoption center. There are all kinds of animals, not just ones from Earth. Kits and cubs from Andoria: heavy-pelted or else smooth as ice, with multiple mouths filled with teeth just as sharp. Tellaride gaggles and schools: flighted creatures of bejeweled-crystal feathers, and water-dwellers barely larger than a hand that consume rocks for food. After talking to Michael one night, she'd had the computer add a sehlat to the club, but that turned out to be a mistake. (It ate half the dogs in one massacre, and the terrorized domestic felines never forgave her, she swears, not even when she had the computer create all-new ones.)

One day she's flopped out on the floor of her Pretend Pet Palace, an orange feline draped over her bare feet, its engine purr making her toes curl; a canine puppy squirming on her chest, its tiny tail whipping side-to-side so quickly its entire rear end goes with it; a school of bright swimming souls filling the air with crunching rock sounds. She glances out the window and see the rippling, wild grasses of a prairie – no, a savanna. Only in vids has she ever seen a real savanna – well, okay, in holodecks, too – but she knows the kinds of animals that live there. Some kinds, anyway. On Earth, there had once been these horses with black stripes. (Maybe there are still some there?) On this other planet where her mom had once been posted, there were these creatures that (sorta) looked like the lions of Earth – except they'd been greenish and had six legs instead of four – and they'd lived on savannas. And, no, she'd never seen any in the wild, but she did see one up close, once. 

It had been in a cage.

Actually, she'd gone to see it more than once, every time her mother let her, and cried for hours until she feel asleep. The amethyst eyes that should have been fierce with freedom, glossy as death from a crushed spirit. . . the sharp claws meant to hunt and protect and teach, missing. . . That image is forever branded on her essence.

(Years later, on _Discovery,_ she would awaken from the memory, tears fresh on her face – and look over at her new roommate. What happens to a wild one put in a cage? If it's ever free again, will it ever regain its former, well-deserved glory? It will if she has anything to say about it.)

She knows not everything in this universe is for her. She's just as willing to fight for the creatures of Earth as she is for the Humans, maybe even more than she is for herself.

When she gets the computer to create the almost-lions and striped horses and a dozen other creatures to live in the grass-lands, she's more than happy to catch glances of them through the Pet Palace windows.

It makes her smile, just knowing they're there.


	4. Rhys

[. . . or torture of those we  
did not love but also  
did not want to kill]

Sometimes Rhys has to remind himself that the war's over, and they won. With the Klingons, an armistice is the same thing as a victory.

It's easier to remind himself – and believe it – during the daytime hours. At night – whenever that may be – it's a different story.

He is haunted by the ghosts of war.

When not on duty, not in the mess hall, not hanging out with friends – he's taken to listening to music. Grandfather once told him, _There are more songs in the universe than there are stars,_ and he believes this true. What were once condescendingly called “folk songs” are his very favorite: so often they each carry within them truths about life that are impossible to ignore. Many peoples were recording wisdom through music long before writing stuff down. Listening to music gets him out of his head, away from his own circular thoughts.

(Do the Klingons have music? Surely they must.)

The notes and melodies keep him from hearing things he shouldn't, like the endless wails and cries of people he was too late to protect. The message that Lorca had played from Corvan II to motivate them to work harder – he constantly hears again and again the children screaming for mothers and fathers already dead.

(How many Klingon children were killed during the war? He's not so stupid as to think there weren't any, especially not after the near-miss destroying their homeworld.) 

But no music can stop him from thinking about exploding ships – the way lights flicker and flare before fading, how duranium melts under fire and freezes in the cold, how emergency bulkheads bend and buckle, allowing bodies to float into the void. The _Gagaren,_ the _Monsoon,_ the _Lebannon,_ a half-dozen others. . . all gone because he hadn't plotted a trajectory fast enough, or fired quickly enough, or simply did something flat-out wrong.

(Exactly how many Klingon deaths had he caused? And been pleased about it, at the time.)

Lorca had ordered him to fire on disabled ships, to attack vessels obviously attempting to escape, on more than one occasion. And he'd done it, even as part of him asked, _Wait, are you sure?_

He'd only ever asked Lorca that once.

Thank gods Burnham and Tilly had gotten Cornwell to stop the mission to destroy Qo'noS. Being responsible for the massacre of billions of people – and an entire planet – would probably have made him suicidal. No amount of music in the universe would have saved him.

The war is over. He'd been a good soldier.

Now he has to live with it.


	5. Detmer

[A grandiose idea, born of flying.  
But underneath the grandiose idea  
is the thought that what I must engage. . .  
is meant to break my heart or reduce me to silence.]

Dear Tazzy,

You know how sometimes I have those no-talking phases? Well, I'm having another one. That's why I'm writing this instead of sending it the usual way. It's been four days since I felt like saying anything (besides what I have to say when I'm on duty. I can still pretty much do that. Don't know what I'd do if I got relieved. . . probably go crazy :) 

I'm not really sure what triggered the silence this time. Just woke up and didn't feel like talking anymore. Maybe it's just everything finally catching up to me. All the stuff with the war, then coming back to earth and having everyone say thank you or call me a hero. There's so much stuff that happened during the war no one knows about, and every time someone called me a hero I felt like a liar. And then we get a new captain, which is good – he's a good captain – but I was hoping things might work out so that Mr. Saru. . . you remember me telling you about that, right?

Anyway, we don't have a counselor on _Discovery._ We used to, but Counselor Patmet and the person who was captain then didn't get along, and when Patmet transferred out the person who was captain then didn't let another counselor take the position. Not sure how many people would want the job now, not everyone likes all the _Discovery_ crew. I told you about that, remember? Not every crew member is called a hero. If you didn't know what happened, you wouldn't understand. I'm not worried about not having a counselor, you know I think most of them aren't helpful. I still haven't figured out how asking someone to explain why they don't feel like talking is in any way useful.

The last time this happened wasn't long after Michael came to _Discovery._ The person who was captain then told me to snap out of it or he'd get me reassigned. That wasn't useful, either. Like I enjoy loosing all my words. I spent _days_ pretending everything was fine, no problems, at least while on duty. Spent all the rest of the time crying in my quarters, but that didn't matter to him. I hated Michael a bunch for awhile. Now I know it wasn't her fault, it was his.

I remember the first time I had one of these phases on the _Shenzhou,_ after cousin Ahmet died and I was too far away to get back for the funeral. Captain Georgiou was so kind and understanding. Michael wasn't, and Seru didn't know what to do with me, but Captain Georgiou was amazing. Did I ever tell you? When I wasn't on the bridge, she would find me just to tell me stories or read something pretty. I think she must have told Michael, because Michael started coming with her, and they would have snarky talks that always made me smile. I miss that Captain Georgiou.

But Michael and Saru are different now. Saru set up this dedicated comm channel so that I can type and send info from my helm console directly to him in real-time, so I don't have to make myself find words and sound happy, and that saves me so much energy. Michael does this thing where she shows up randomly and sits with me, not saying a word. I started letting her see some of my sketchbook. She says these really complicated things that take me forever to figure out, even longer to realize they're compliments. You'd like her and Seru, I think.

My other friends are being really supportive. But they're confused and worried. I wish they wouldn't be. Bryce keeps sending me poetry that I don't really get. I have found some new songs I like, thanks to Rhys and his new fascination with music. Not sure if Joanne thinks I'm not capable of taking care of myself or what, but she's been staying over in my quarters. And then there's Tilly.

Tilly is amazing. She keeps dragging me to the holosuite to do all this weird stuff. Yesterday we went swimming in a purple sea, and there were yellow fish with 3 eyes. I sketched a picture, I'll send it with this letter. She says when I'm back to talking, she wants me to teach her some flying tricks. It's so sad you didn't get a chance to meet her.

Anyway, Tazzy, when you read this, don't be upset. I'll get through this like I always do. Every time the silence comes, I think of you, and how you always help me find words again.

I'm surrounded by stars, and people who remind me of you.

Love you,

Kay :) :)


End file.
